


Make Me A Saint

by Swifty_Fox



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Catholicism as a metaphor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, None of these topics are discussed in detail buy dead dove dont open rules stand, Pedophilia, Period Typical Slurs, Period-Typical Homophobia, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26716276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swifty_Fox/pseuds/Swifty_Fox
Summary: “Were you loved as a child Yusuf?” Nicky croaks, words muffled into skin but heard all the same.He feels Joe still.They rarely spoke of their mortal lives. Not with others, not with each other. The line between who they had been born as and who they had been reborn as was seventy years of murder and war wide. And for the sake of grief, the sake of mourning, it was best not to dwell on all that was lost.___loose Sequel to The Calcification Of A God. Nicky once again is a guilty catholic
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 21
Kudos: 335





	Make Me A Saint

**Author's Note:**

> Back again with more suffering Nicky though we get more of the other immortals here as well.
> 
> Again a second warning, this deals with some heavy topics and although nothing is entirely explicit it can still be upsetting. Some period-type slurs are used.
> 
> Dubious historical research once again observed.

_ ~ _

_ I love you above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because you are all good and worthy of all my love _

_ ~ _

Nicky had been born with rage inside him. 

He had come into the world bloody and screaming and had not stopped from that moment forward. 

Or so his mother had claimed. 

It was a strange thing; he could remember the exact curve of her lips, the laugh in her voice as she gripped his chin bloody and bruised from another fight ‘ _ So angry my Nicolo, born with a fire in your belly _ .’ But he could not remember the color of her eyes nor the way she smelled. 

Such was the curse of immortality. No rhyme or reason to the things one forgot, but every piece an agony all the same. 

That anger chased him all his mortal life, from the schoolyard brawls to the monastery where his father sent him hoping to cool his heels a bit, to the soldiers training he received in preparation for the Holy Wars. His father, his teachers, thought to put tools in his hands, to teach him to build and create and focus that anger into something productive; but chisels and hammers were just as effective weapons as a sword and the butcher's boy who dared to make leering comments about his sister Maria learned that fact faster than most. The beating administered by his father after that one still left scars on his immortal body, unassuming white whip marks across his lower torso, long healed and mostly forgotten. 

Most who came across the immortal duo thought that Joe was the one with the temper. His love was quick to feeling, be it anger or joy, and felt no qualms about expressing either to the fullest extent. Nicky on the other hand had been described on many occasions and in many creative ways as borderline cold and unfeeling.

It was not that Nicky did not feel, but rather that when Joe became angry one could expect shouting, perhaps a thrown object or two, quickly giving way to laughter and apologies. When Nicky gave into his rage, devastation was left behind. 

Perhaps it was the Church. A religion built on the foundations of secrecy and shame did not leave much room for outward emotion. Perhaps somewhere between the stained glass windows and polished wooden pews, Nicky had forgotten how to let himself feel freely. Perhaps it had been trained, beaten,  _ prayed _ out of him. Lost to communion wine and communion bread and aging priests with robes like bat wings and skin that rubbed like paper. 

So Joe expressed himself freely and Nicky followed behind, reserved and collected, complementing each other as only two beings who had spent a dozen lifetimes together could. 

~

_ I came to You late, O Beauty so ancient and new. I came to love You late. -You gave out such a delightful fragrance and I drew it in and came breathing hard after You. I tasted, and it made me hunger and thirst; You touched me, and I burned to know Your Peace _

~

“You two would be icons at pride. The oldest gay couple still around.” Nile says one evening over dinner. 

Nicky stops mid-chew. Beside him, Joe slowly puts down his fork. The zucchini lasagna that Nicky had spent much of the afternoon preparing curls steam deliciously into the air. He can see Nile tense, her dark eyes lighting with confusion.

“I’ve said something stupid again” She starts “Some immortal manners rule broken I’m sor-” 

Nicky holds up a hand and she shuts her mouth, setting her own fork down. At the head of the table, Andy sighs through her nose and takes her plate over to the couch, effectively removing herself from the conversation.

“I’m-” Nile tries to apologize again.

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” he says quietly, always so quiet. The monks used to rap his knuckles and order him to speak up. Once he’d taken their switch and broken it over the monks head. The punishment had almost been worth the dumbfounded look on the old man's face. 

“I hate that term,” he says “gay. It is too new, and had far less savory meanings when it came around.”

“Once upon a time it referred to prostitutes” Joe supplies “Especially little boys” 

Nicky nods, sipping his lemon water - a particular favorite since it had come to significant popularity in the mid 20th century- “I understand that now it is a term of pride, but it has never fit us.”

“Besides” Joe returns to his meal, eating with the gusto of a man who has been intimately acquainted with starvation “I am not gay. I had a wife and children once upon a time.” His voice was pointed, a little painful. Nicky takes his hand under the table. Squeezes it. Joe squeezes back and Nile purses her lips with the look of a woman who knows better than to voice the obvious question swimming in her eyes.

There are several beats of silence. Nicky sips his lemon water again, offers Joe another square of lasagna which the man gratefully accepts.

“So what would you call yourselves then?” 

Nicky exchanges a glance with Joe, the warning look not lost on him. He raises an eyebrow slightly and Joe sights. He turns back to Nile with a faint wry smile on his lips.

“Well in our day we were called sodomites-”

Nile visibly winces and Nicky’s smile grows minutely larger.

“-but that was a horrible term even then.” 

“We don’t really label ourselves as anything” Joe cuts in, taking pity on Nile. She was still new to immortality, new to their group and she was still learning to recognize the subtle art that was Nicky’s teasing. “After a few hundred years things like being a man who loves a man, or” he glances at Andy “A woman who loves a woman or anything beyond that has little meaning.” Joe draws their hands out from under the table, rests their intertwined fingers on the heavy oak “If you need a word, I believe simply ‘Lovers’ suits us just fine.” 

Nicky carefully splits his lasagna down the middle, wiggling his fork from side to side to separate the two pieces. He holds the utensil like a blade, delicate and careful. “I think-” he starts quietly “-I think that there is an expectation that because we are men we must live and love boldly. That we should label and define and sort what we are into careful boxes. That we need to declare our love to the world for it to be judged and inevitably hated. And there is bravery in that yes, but Yusuf and I have spent most of our immortal lives unable to breathe a word of what we are to each other to anyone but those you see here.” he takes a bite, chewing and swallowing “For us, it is enough to simply be able to touch one another in public, to say ‘I love you’ freely and anywhere. It is enough for me.” 

“And I as well,  _ amore _ ” Joe says with a smile, the crow's feet around his eyes creasing.

Behind them, Andy makes a noise of disgust. Nicky chuckles softly “And we love you as well Andromache fear not.” 

“Thank god, I was afraid for a moment” comes the reply and Nile is the first to laugh.

~

_ Thou art omnipotent; make me a Saint. Thou hast sought me while I was fleeing from Thee; Thou didst love me when I despised Thy love; abandon me not, now that I seek Thee and love Thee. May I this day give myself wholly to Thee. _

_ ~ _

This is the thing.

Human beings were not made to last upon the world for more than a handful of decades, and though lifespans had increased significantly since Nicky’s birth, a century was still all that the normal person could hope for. 

The human mind was not  _ made _ to process and remember as much information as the Guard had gathered over their supernatural lifespans. Memories came and went with the frequency of birds, dialects, cities, names, all forgotten in the blink of an eye. Sometimes Nicky would wake up and forget what century he was in, would forget that a certain dish was invented, and spend weeks craving a taste he could not name. 

Human things like hunger and thirst and pain became meaningless. It would all pass, it would all heal and be forgotten. 

Trauma was a fact of life. Sometimes things would upset Nicky and he could not even recall  _ why _ . Only knew that the sell of burned flesh, in particular, made him sick and that the screech of train tracks always had his hair standing on end. Or Joe, who grew inexplicably sad at the sight of pomegranates or shuddered anytime they made their way into Regency Era displays at Museums. 

There were times when the sight of Churches with their Holy men in their Holy robes made sweat gather at Nicky's palms and bile rise in his throat. 

Times like now, walking past a press conference outside of NYC’s Governmental Courthouse. It was a chance encounter; Joe, Nicky, and Nile had been seeking a pastry store that Joe  _ swore _ was still open despite his last time setting foot in the establishment having been in 1963. 

Nicky, heading up the rear, picks up on the commotion first.

A well-dressed woman with carefully bound blond hair and a severe nose speaks calmly to a crowd of wild press and spectators. Beside her, leaning on a man many years his junior was a wizened old man, robes well worn but clean and rheumy eyes glaring over the crowd defiantly. His liver-spotted hands tensed and relaxed reflexively on the younger man’s - perhaps his son- arm. 

“On this day, the twenty-first of September, Defendant Father Marcus has been declared innocent on all charges-” the woman begins.

Loud boos and cries of anger arise from the crowd of watchers, the Press cameras flash with greater urgency

“- The charges of twelve counts of child sexual abuse, two counts of child endangerment, twenty-three counts of possession of explicit photos of a minor and two counts of tampering with evidence.” 

Nicky’s palms are sweating he realizes. His mouth dry and there’s a particular ringing in his head that reminds him of a bullet to the brain. In front of him, Nile and Joe have stopped, Nile's face twisted with anger and disgust. 

“A disgrace to the church” Nile spits under her breath, vehement with that particular vigor that comes from being a new immortal. A sort of conviction that every single wrong was now on her shoulders alone to right. She would learn soon enough.

Off to the left, separated by a few telling feet from the press was a small group, several families with children. At the forefront is a boy, no more than fourteen, with renaissance curls and a pale empty gaze. His mother clutches him to her breast, rage, and grief on her face in equal measure but her son has a look that Nicky knows far too well. He had seen it enough times over the centuries on battle-worn soldiers and starving refugees. Utter hopelessness. He stares with dead eyes at the Priest, neither accusation for absolution in them.

Nicky’s rage caught in his chest, his throat, curled and snapped between his teeth like bitter burnt garlic. He reaches for a sword that has not been strapped to his side in nearly three centuries, fingers curling uselessly at his hip white-knuckled. He stares at the Priest, committing every wrinkle, every liver spot, and hair to memory. He looks like so many others, other men of the cloth who thought that God's word gave them the right to take whatever they desired with hungry hands and hungrier mouths. Grasping and tearing and creeping hands with yellowed nails like claws, bloody from torn cuticles and stained black from manuscript ink-

“It is a miracle alone that he even went to trial,” Joe says softly. He steps up beside Nicky and does not touch him but his quiet presence is reassurance even in of itself “In our experience, the Church keeps these things pretty hush-hush” 

“Have a lot of experiences with pedophile priests do you?” Nile asks tightly and although Nicky knows her anger is directed at the man- the monster- in front of them, it still shoots a barb of shame straight to his heart. 

“The Church clings to many antiquated traditions,” Nicky says, pushing his way through the crowd. He suddenly cannot stand to be anywhere near the shouting and jeering of the protestors, the blonde woman desperately trying to finish her statement, Father Marcus with his creeping hands. The boy with his soldier's eyes. He can see Nile hurry to follow after him, Joe replacing him in the rear though he can feel his lover's concerned eyes boring into the back of his head. “That includes” he adds, the words feeling vicious and filthy before he even utters them “A penchant for pretty young boys.” 

He knows he’s shocked Nile again with his vulgar honesty, can see her brows draw together. It brings a bitter thrill to his chest, so entangled is he in the hypocrisy of the Church to see another try to reconcile love for the divine with the evil of mankind.

_ And good luck to her. It had been nearly a thousand years and Nicky had yet to know where to draw the line between his faith and his morality. _

“They used to preselect young boys, those with the best voices and cut them to keep their song pure. They called them  _ castrati  _ and they were infamous. Though I always suspect that occasionally it would be more for looks than for talent. Old men do grow lonely with celibacy.” 

Nile looks sickened, glancing once again over her shoulder and he can see the rage curl her fists. He smiles bitter and cold.

“And what about you?” Nile asks, so boldly it amuses Nicky more than offends him. 

He turns, meets Joe’s eyes, and gives his concerned face a fond look that only the other man can recognize. He winks conspiratorily “I made sure to never sing.” He phrases it like a joke, like an amusing anecdote of his long life and he can tell that Nile doesn’t quite know how to react. 

Behind her, Joe looks at him with increasing worry. He knew all Nicky's moods, knew every single minute reaction and he could always tell when Nicky was losing himself to a certain sort of immortal cynicism that usually made its home with Booker and Andy. Nicky simply shrugs a shoulder.

“The practice was outlawed in 1861 of course. You can only find recordings of the last  _ castrati,  _ Allesandro Moreschi now. They’re really quite beautiful.” 

“I think I’ll pass on looking those up on Youtube” Nile murmurs. 

Nicky makes himself chuckle “Come, Andy is expecting us.” 

The crowds seem to part for the three of them as they leave the shadow of the courthouse. Whether it is the cold expression on Nicky's face, Nile’s white-hot rage, or even the quiet simmering anger of Joe, one could not tell.

His hands were still shaking. 

The thing about trauma when one is immortal is that there is no need to confront it really. Why should they? Why when the next one is just around the corner, when it could be forgotten in a matter of hours or days and the trembling and shortness of breath can be attributed to lack of food or sleep rather than something far less physical. 

To the Guard, trauma was a personality trait. 

  
  
  
  


~

_ Make me conquer all things to please Thee. Accept the love of a soul which has offended Thee so deeply. Show me the immense good Thou art, that I may love Thee exceedingly. I desire to love Thee exceedingly in this life, that I may love Thee exceedingly in the next. _

_ ~ _

He knows that Nile thinks him the quietest of the group, the gentlest. And indeed over the centuries Nicky had tempered himself, had taught himself gentle arts like cooking and meditation and teamaking. He let himself love his family in his quiet fierce way, endeavoring to find Andy the specific baklava she remembered from her long-distant childhood, making Booker's favorite tea, loving his Joe until his toes curled and prayers in English and languages no longer spoken fell from his lips. 

Somewhere in the near-century he spent trying to slaughter Joe he learned how to bite back the beast that lived in his belly. 

_ So angry my Niccolo. _

His mother's voice echos in his ears as he assembles his gun, screwing on the silencer and checking the clip. 

“I am sorry mama” he murmurs, wondering if he could ever remember her name again. Madiana? Iseppa? “Your little boy will always be angry” 

He leaves Joe sleeping or pretending to sleep if the slight hitch in his breath is anything to go by.

Joe does not offer to come. Nicky does not ask him. 

“ _ I do not understand _ ” Joe had told him earlier that evening when he had first seen the plan forming in Nicky's eyes. “ _ But please be safe habibi _ ” 

“ _ Darling _ ,” Nicky had murmured over his book “ _ The only thing allowed to kill me these days is you _ ” 

It had made Joe laugh, which was better than Joe’s worry and settled some of the roiling rage in his chest. 

Nile is waiting in the living room dressed in dark clothes and armed with at least two guns and a knife judging by her stance. Her eyes burn and her chin is stubborn. Her cross glitters accusingly on her chest.

“I’m coming” Is all she says.

Nicky tears his eyes away from the cross, considers asking her to tuck it away. He considers telling her no.

_ I do not want you to come. I do not want you to see me like this. I cannot bear the thought of you fearing me, hating me. Judging me as others have done. I am not a kind gentle thing little sister I am brimstone and fury and resurrection fire and where I go tonight there is no room for  _ **_God_ ** .

He nods at her.

“Try to keep up” 

Booker was the techie of the group, there was no doubt to that, but most of the Guard knew there way around a basic identity hack. It was no issue for Nicky to pull up the residence, quietly protected from all press, of a Father Marcus O’Dudley. Its a modest brick house tucked in the suburban outskirts of New York City. 

Flowers dotted the front with moderate Democratic campaign signs on the front lawn and a pristine American flag waving from the garage. Entirely unassuming, unthreatening, and even welcoming to the casual observer. Nicky had looked up the photos on Google Images. 

Nile drives, Nicky murmuring quiet instructions between prayers, hood up and head hunched over his gun. It was ritual more than faith at this point, prayers for strength and protection a habit before every battle. Before every life taken. 

In his chest burns a dragon, burns a lion, burns the fire of a rage that never quite went out in the year 1099. It burns and burns, turning his veins to ash and his heart to molten rage. When he looks up to the mirror he finds himself surprised that his eyes do not burn with brimstone.

A meager protection detail of two patrol cars are parked outside and the two immortals split up to incapacitate the officers. They’d wake up zip tied and with terrible headaches and though Nicky had little love for the bullies and sadists that made up police, it was not their night to die. 

They don plastic gloves, step carefully to avoid crushing the newly watered green grass, and keep out of the floodlights. Nicky picks the front lock, safe in the knowledge that this was the kind of neighborhood where alarms weren’t used. People slept secure in their homes, sure that their tax bracket kept them safe from all the awful things of the night. 

The interior is just as modest as the exterior, with flowery papered wallpaper and a myriad of photos covering the walls. Father Marcus as a young man receiving his robes, Father Marcus holding Mass, presiding over dinners, smiling with his diocese. There were many photos of him with children, smiling and genial with modest hands on shoulders and heads. Twinkling eyes and kindly smile the Devil hid himself as God's Creatures too. 

Nicky resists the urge to spit at the frames as they venture into the house, Nile heading up his six. The hallway opens up into a joint kitchen living room, covered with more photos and several crucifixes. The furniture was well worn but clean and a single lamp shines next to an armchair facing away from the hallway. The TV was playing old reruns of  _ I Love Lucy _ and Nicky allows himself to recall meeting the actress during a brief mission in Hollywood. She had smelled terribly of cigarettes though he could not be sure if it was her own habit or that of the people around her. 

Father Marcus head was just visible over the chair, white hair neatly trimmed at the sides and thinning under the valiant combover on the top. 

The rage inside him expands, covers his skin, vibrates from the tips of his hair to the soles of his feet. He thinks he could breathe fire, he thinks he will combust on the spot, and when he breathes he imagines steam rising from his mouth. Oh, how Nicky could rage, oh how he could  _ hate _ . This mockery of a man, of a faith, of the life that Nicolo had left behind to become a monster himself.

His shoulder brushes against a wall hanging of silver crosses, the beads quietly tinkling against each other. 

Father Marcus starts and turns, a cat leaping indignantly from his lap. It races past Nicky's legs with a howl. It takes a moment for the old man to see through the gloom with his eyes but when he does they widen in terror at the sight of the two intruders.

Nicky steps further into the room, into the light though he feels farther than ever from its touch and spreads his hands pleasantly. He knows he’s smiling, a faint cruel quirk of the lips that is barely noticeable in the gloom.

“Salve, Pater,” He says. 

The old priest pales, leaning back from his chair. “Who are you?” he demands, voice quavering. “How dare you break into my home do you know who I-”

“We know who you are” Nile interrupts him, swinging round to Niles flank, gun drawn and aimed “we know  _ what _ you are. And don’t-” She jerks her gun to where Father Marcus was none-too-subtly reaching for the corded phone “even think about it” 

Nicky circles around the side of the chair, taking in the photos on the wall once again. More children.  _ So many children _ . Laughing faces and easy hands so casual and innocent behind the camera. A Priest who loved his flock, who was loved by them in turn. It had been the perfect disguise for centuries. 

It was not that faith was evil. Of all the things that Nicky could recall from his childhood, the warmest of memories were those of his church with its soaring ceiling and beautiful glass windows. Of food and friends and hymns sung with solemn joy. For him, it had meant family and community and safety. It was not religion who perverted, but the men and women that used it as a means to evil. And it made Nicky  _ angry _ . It made him so angry. That he could find so much solace and so much pain in the same space in his heart. 

Nicky had once been a priest too. With holy purpose and love in his heart and it had still not been enough to stop his blindness.

“Who was that man with you earlier?” he asks curiously 

“P-pardon me?”

“The man. The one at the press conference.” Nicky presses, stepping closer. Father Marcus falls back off the chair, aged fingers splayed over the vintage shag carpet. He was thin and wasted in his nightclothes, bony hips and bony shoulders poking through the cloth like crow wings. Nicky knew death, knew its creeping touch like an old friend. This man would not have many years left for the world. 

“Who was he?” 

Father Marcus licks his lips. His tongue was bulbous, purple, and too large like a toads. Every part of him sent shivers of revulsion down Nicky’s spine. He knew his hands were shaking once again, his breath hitching every few draws. Simple bodily reactions, nothing more. His mind was cold, his chest a blazing furnace of anger.

He clamped down on it.  _ Not yet not yet _ .

“M-my nephew he was my nephew do you know him? He doesn’t live here I can tell you where he is. Please” 

So willing to sell out his own family to save his own skin. Nile's face mirrors his own disgust. 

“We aren’t here for him,” Nile says, safety off, finger on the trigger. She waited for Nicky’s signal however, nods to him to take the lead.

He was going to anyways. 

“The Church chose to not protect you.” Nicky muses “it is a curious thing.” 

“Please” Father Marcus moans, his eyes on Niles gun, still seeing her as the greater threat. Nicky’s hands shake harder at his pleas. He clasps them behind his back, palms to elbows. At his silence, Father Marcus grows angry “What do you want?! I was acquitted! I am innocent. I am a Priest, a man of the people-” 

“ _ I was a priest before your bible was even written old man _ ” Nickys voice thunders in the tiny room, crackling over the walls like fire. Even Nile flinches at the sudden volume. He takes another step forwards, bracketing Father Marcus’ arthritic twisted feet with his own.

His voice does not shake.

“I preached the word of God before your language was even  _ invented _ . I have known the church for longer than you can comprehend. I have seen great men and evil men take up the word of the Lord and I have seen them all rendered dust. I have seen you and I have judged you, Father Marcus. The Church may practice restraint but I do not. The diocese may have turned a blind eye I but I do not. The courts may have found you innocent but  _ I do not _ . 

He rests his hand on the pommel of his sword. It had once been used to slaughter hundreds, thousands, of innocents. Innocents in the name of God. Now it would buy back every innocent life with blood. Nicky draws his sword and Father Marcus cries out in terror, throwing his hands up in front of him.

The Priest was praying in rapid Latin, voice rising desperately. “ _ Pater benedice illis non enim sciunt quid fuciunt- _ ” 

Nicky gives in to the roaring in his chest. 

He lashes out, his sword catching the old man's upraised arms. Blood and two fingers streak the floor and the Priest howls in agony. He rolls, pushing himself to his feet, and stumbles down the hallway. Nicky raises his sword again tears across the old man's hip, baring fishbelly-white flesh and raw red meat beneath. His sleep pants fall, leaving his lower half exposed and bloodstained. Father Marcus cries out again, taking another desperate step to hopeless freedom.

Once Nicky would have called the anger righteous fury. The Wrath of God filling his chest and guiding him in holy purpose. Ridding the world of evil men and evil things. Now, Nicky was not so naive. He was not a holy creature. He was, at his core, a violent hateful thing. He was wrath and anger and retribution and there was no salvation for him at the end of this long life. He would damn himself over and over for the good of others but he no longer worshiped for his own salvation. 

That had vanished sure as his mortal life. 

“Never again.” he hisses. The sword lashes out, opening Father Marcus from shoulder to hip.

The priest falls, howling in pain and anger, chest heaving as he sobs. His clothes were dark with blood now, the skin peeling apart from his flayed back like the pages of a book. White bone of his spine peeks through the angry meat and Nicky can feel the spots of blood coating the inside of his nostrils. 

“On your knees Father,” he says. 

The old man sobs. He drags him up by bloody hair, propping him against a wall when its clear the man cannot hold himself up. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Nile flinch. 

Nicky was not one to draw out deaths and did not relish in pain and torture. He had seen enough human suffering during the Crusades to last him the rest of his extended lifespan. He did not know what wicked bitter creature had taken over his heart. Maybe this was the Devil come to possess his body. Maybe this was who he had always been. 

_ She will never look me in the eye again _ . He thinks to himself.

He does not care. 

He was so tired,  _ so tired _ . Tired of old men who sought to find their youth in young boys. He was tired of the same pain ripping him open over and over, of the hands that crept through his dreams and memories of hungry tongues and hungry eyes and cold skin. He could not even remember if it was even  _ real _ anymore. This was not the man he had once known but perhaps he could bury his demons in Father Marcus’ body. 

“Never again.” He says. His words are closer to a sob than he would prefer to admit and he brings his sword down again. Metal rends flesh, rib bones, and sternum peeking through fabric and skin and fat. Father Marcus was crying, eyes swollen and red, snot running freely from his nose to mix with the blood and tears across his face.

“ _P_ _ lease”  _ Father Marcus moans, raising his bloody hands. The bloody severed stumps of his fingers gush freely. “ _ Please I did not mean to! The children- the children they are so sinful, so sinful now I could not help-” _

“That is a lie” Nicky whispers. 

Nile shoulders up to him, the gun shaking in her grasp. “Nobody accidentally does that to a  _ child _ !”

“You filthy men take up the robes as a guise” Nicky adds. He wonders if Nile can feel the way his body trembles in contrast to his steady hands. He does not care, he and this beast that has taken over do not  _ care _ “You use the power and the love of the church to make your followers trust you and then you  _ rot them from within _ . You are the sickness, you are the false prophets and the liars and the deceivers. There may not be a Devil Father, but there are certainly always men like you.” 

His fingers, slick with blood, tighten on the hilt of the sword. Father Marcus’ ruined body shudders, eyes glazing with the sight of his own death. The hallway reeked of blood. It streaked across the walls, across those cursed pictures. It speckled the empty eyes of the boy from the Courthouse. The stains would not leave this photograph, just as the stain would never leave his skin. 

“I will go to the courthouse tomorrow!” The old man gasps “I will confess my sins! I will confess all of them! I swear it!” 

The sword spins in Nicky's grasp. He is Michael with his flaming sword, he is Gabriel, he is the avenging angels of Sodom and Gomorrah raining down holy fire and death. He knew deep down that he was hiding behind his own righteous fury to justify this act of murder. He was no better than the hundreds of other corrupt men who used Catholicism to further their agendas. 

He simply knew it.

“No,” Nicky says “You will not.” 

Father Marcus slumps, a puppet with his strings cut, and bows his head. He begins to pray once again, lips moving rapid fire. 

“ _ Pater benedice illis non enim sciunt quid fuciunt. De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine.Domine, exaudi vocem meam. Fiant aures tuae intendentes, in vocem deprecationis meae. Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine-”  _

This somehow makes Nicky angrier than all else, this sudden acceptance of his fate. This man did not deserve to die dignified and holy. He did not deserve to die with psalms on his lips. 

Nicky’s sword falls. The prayers stop abruptly and a thick gurgling replaces it. Nicky's stomach turns and he strikes out again, silencing the noise. Again, and again, and again. The body is silent now, more meat and shattered bone than human. Blood fills Nicky’s mouth, his nose, his eyes. It coats his hands and hair and skin. He baptizes himself in the blood of this evil man and feels nothing. Distantly he swears he can hear the scream of dying soldiers, taste sand grit between his teeth. He swears he can feel the pinch of chain mail armor on the back of his neck. His body burns, his anger his Lord and God far more wrathful than the Bible could ever conjure up. 

Nicky’s soul had been damned from the moment he had been born. Born broken and wrong, too angry too spiteful. How immortality had been a balm, soothing him with his love for Joe, tricking him into believing that he could control this hatred he had been born with. 

His arms give out, the sword falling to a carpet saturated with gore. Stumbling back against a wall he slides to the floor and sits there, sucking in air desperately. 

Nile appears, clean of blood, and face sweating. Her lips were pale. “Nicky we need to go. We need to go now” 

He breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth, specks of blood flying through the air with the force of it. After a moment he nods. His voice feels paralyzed, tongue stolen by the beast in his chest. 

They torch the house, the flames rising from the chimney, blowing out the windows and waving them goodbye as they speed away.

Nile drives once again, Nicky numb in the passenger seat, sword across his knees. His hands sit uselessly in his lap, fingers unfeeling. Blood crusted them, mapping out every crack and crevice in his knuckles, his palms, his cuticles. It was a familiar sight. 

“It’s  _ benedic _ ” he says idly. 

Nile barely spares him a glance “What?”

“His Latin was wrong. In his Sacrament of Confession. His conjugation.” Nicky feels stilted, the words coming difficult to his tongue. 

Nile continues to stare so he nods his head. “Father Marcus said,  _ Pater benedice illis non enim sciunt quid faciunt _ . That is wrong. It should be  _ Pater benedic _ .” 

“Does it matter?” Nile bursts out, the car swerving. “Jesus Nicky you butchered the guy back there! I’ve never-” She swallows and Nicky drops his head back against the seat. He thinks he may be ashamed. Feeling had become a faraway concept for him. It was secondary to the anger that still filled him, that death head not fixed, that a thousand deaths would not fix. “Where did that  _ come _ from Nicky?” 

Nicky cannot answer her.

~

_ make me also see the deformity of the sins I have committed, that I may humble myself and detest them as I ought; and, on the other hand, show me how worthy Thou art, by reason of Thy goodness, that I should love Thee with all my heart _

~

Andy is waiting for them when they return, face twisted with ugly fury. For a moment Nile hesitates to get out of the car, thinking that a locked door would offer at least meager protection against the former immortal's wrath. 

She had never seen Nicky like that. She had spent the last couple of years sorting through the complicated dynamics of the immortals. Complex did not even begin to describe them, they had as many facets as lifetimes they had lived and she was sure it would be centuries before they stopped surprising Nile. 

But there were things that she  _ knew _ . Andy was abrasive on the best of days, but she loved her sweets and if one plied her enough and caught her in the right mood she was a wondrous storyteller. She loved them all fiercely and showed it with the same fierceness. Joe was passionate, he was loud and good-humored. An artist and a poet and a philosopher he often enjoyed debating the others, much to the annoyance of Andy. He always wished Nile a cheerful good morning and a quiet goodnight. 

Nicky was the steady one of the group. The quietest, the calmest and though she knew that he was no less dangerous with his longsword and talent with rifles, she still always pictured him as the gentlest. He carried bags for old women and struck up quiet conversation with store clerks and had more than once left food out for the strays that frequented their many hideouts. He rose before the rest of them and went to sleep first, usually with a book under one arm. He had a gentle heart, he treated Nile kindly, and though he rarely smiled she had also never seen him grow angry. 

Not until tonight in that tiny home with that wretched man. Nicky had become...something else. Something ancient and wrathful and  _ angry _ . Suddenly she had been able to see the invading crusader he had once been, seen the warrior he usually kept locked behind a serene wall. He had practically glowed with rage and Nile could not help but feel that his rage towards Father Marcus had been personal but he had never mentioned  _ knowing _ the Priest. Though with their long lives, it was not impossible. 

“ _ What the Hell was that!”  _ Andy hisses the moment Nicky steps out of the car. She shoves him back against the car, the force of it rocking the vehicle. He stares down at her impassively 

“It’s  _ already _ all over the news!” Andy shouts, voice carrying over the empty mountains of their safehouse “You murder a Priest? The  _ night _ after he’s declared innocent in a high profile case? You might as well have shot a fucking beacon into the sky declaring ‘ _ here we are _ ’! What were you  _ thinking _ ?” 

“We protect people.” Nicky says mildly, though there’s nothing  _ mild _ about the blazing behind his eyes “I was simply doing our duty.” 

“Our  _ duty _ is covert operations! Not random vigilante killings in the dead of night because one measly priest slipped through the judicial cracks! What is he to you?” 

Nicky's lips are whiter than his teeth “Nothing. He is nothing to me.” Nile can see that he is shaking, fine tremors wracking his body outlined in the moonlight. He brushes past Andy, heading to the house and where Joe watches from the doorway, arms crossed. 

“Oh no, I’m not doing being pissed at you!” Andy grabs his arm, fingers digging into his bicep. Nicky turns fast as a snake and lands a solid hit on her jaw. Andy doesn't go down but its a near thing, stumbling back and eyes sparkling with rage. 

“Oh you fucker” She spits and then they’re brawling, rolling across the front lawn of the mountain cottage lit only by the moonlight. 

Nile and Joe sprint for the duo at the same time, Joe clearing the front steps with a single bound and Nile vaulting herself over the hood of the car. 

“Can you immortals ever be normal for once?!” She shouts as they reach the fighting immortals. Joe arrives first, his long legs eating up the distance, and Nile skids to a stop to avoid slamming into the three of them. It’s clear that Nicky is losing the fight, his unhinged rage no match for six thousand years of experience. Joe shoves himself between them, taking a hit to the shoulder himself but shrugging it off easily. 

“It would be so much more boring if we were” Joe answers good-naturedly, though the amusement does not meet his eyes. He locks an unforgiving arm around Nicky's shoulders and drags him from the fight bodily. Thought Nile wasn’t sure if Nicky was even thinking straight, the man falls easily into his partner's arms, recognizing his touch instinctively. Joe hugs Nicky to his body, rocking him slightly and crooning soft Italian into his ear

“ _ Calmo, Nicolo, Calmo _ ” 

Andy was panting, split lip dripping dark blood into the grass. Not healing, bruises blooming wicked and angry on her skin. It was jarring. Nile puts out a hand to haul her up and offers her jacket to wipe the blood from her face. 

“Don’t do anything like that again Nicky. You of all people should know what happens when we draw attention.” 

Nicky looks up at her, face raging, face blank and empty. Joe's fingers card through his hair and Nile cannot read the other man's expression in the gloom.

“Whatever you say, boss” 

  
  


_ ~ _

_ Forgive me my sins, O Lord, forgive me my sins; _

_ the sins of my youth, the sins of my age, the sins of my soul, _

_ the sins of my body; my idle sins, my serious voluntary sins; _

_ the sins I know, the sins I do not know; the sins I have concealed _

_ for so long, and which are now hidden from my memory. _

_ ~ _

The shower water burns. Even Joe, who had taken to the concept of hot showers with incredible enthusiasm, hisses when it hits his skin. Nicky feels it, staring at the pristine white tile slowly being coated in rusty red water. 

“You are in rare form tonight darling,” Joe says softly, picking up a bar of soap - sandalwood scented, Joes favorite- and working it slowly over Nicky's shoulders. The water runs a deeper shade of red. 

Nicky opens his mouth, closes it. He fears what might fall from his lips, what fire still burns in his chest, and the fallout bitter words and harsh emotion might cause. Yes, Joe had seen the worst of him once upon a time, but one never quite stopped fearing the judgment of their loved ones

“He was an awful man.” Is all he says.

The washcloth is soothing against his shoulders “I think it was foolish.” Joe reprimands in that mild gentle way of his “Going out and I know you would have done it alone if Nile had not sniffed out your plans. I know that you know it was foolish. You are the most thoughtful among us Nicolo, what brought this on?” 

Nicky’s skin crawls, shivering with the sensation of a thousand burrowing worms. He had been blown apart once by a landmine and it had taken a long time to reform after that. Waking to the sound of maggots and worms feasting on his flesh had been top five of his worst resurrections. This felt much the same. Unconsciously he scratches at his skin, raising red lines that vanish as soon as they appear. 

“Do you agree with Andy? That his evil is not  _ important _ enough for us to take care of? That those children aren’t worth it?” 

“That is not what I said  _ habibi _ , and that is not with Andy meant. She was only worried about your and Niles safety. You know that, do not be cruel.” 

“I am cruel,” his mouth says “Yusuf you of all men know the evil in my heart.” 

“And you know mine!” Joe’s hands grip his biceps, turns him about-face, and Nicky is struck by the cold anger in his eyes. “Nicky you know my dark heart as I know yours, I have seen you bloody and broken on the battlefield, I have seen you look at me with hate and love and every emotion in between and I know that you are a  _ good man _ .” 

Nicky laughs, short and bitter, and allows Joe to tip his head back under the spray, strong fingers working the blood tangles out of his hair.

“Did you know him?” 

“No.” Nicky is cold, so so ice-cold despite the scalding water. He is cold down to his soul “No he was nothing to me.” 

“I am angry with you,” Joe says simply. They were too old, centuries past since they had felt the need to hold grudges or let the other guess at their emotions. Joe was angry, it was easier to state it than let it fester. “I am angry and I am worried.”

  
  


“I am sorry love.” And Nicky was sorry. He was sorry to have worried Joe, sorry to have hurt him, and sorry even to have hurt Andy. It is just that the fire burns in him still and he fears that it will consume him he does not let it out. “I am sorry.” 

They meet in the center of the hot spray, teeth catching and hands fervent. Nicky knows his mouth still tastes of blood, knows it is crusted under the fingernails that he drags across Joes back.

He is tainted. 

They fall into bed together, the sturdy frame creaking under their combined weight and frantic movements. The sheets grow damp, stained with rust from bloody water. Nicky's heart hammers in his ears gasps swallowed by Joe's lips. He grips him like salvation, kisses him like communion, and worships him as he had never done between the pews of a church. 

_ Take me, darling. Be the stone wall my storm surge breaks against, be the eye of my storm. Take my broken bitter faith and turn it to something pure and good and light because God knows I cannot myself. _

Confession had never absolved Nicky, had never brought him peace no matter the number of  _ ave marias _ he recited. It had taken centuries but he found his contrition, buried in the arms of a man who was supposed to be his mortal enemy. A man with a heart greater than his own, who saw faith and morality in ways he could not think of, who had guided him back to his own faith after he was sure that got had abandoned him to this purgatory of life. 

“ _ The Prophet Muhammad tells us ‘ _ _ Kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever has not kindness has not faith.’ Joes eyes sparkle, firelight dancing over his bare skin “I am kind because it is” he pauses, searching for the word “godly to do so. I extend you love because it is stronger to do so than to raise my hand in hate. That is not forgiveness. I do not forgive you. But now there is time in your life for atonement.” _

_ “I could live a thousand lifetimes and not atone for what I have done.” _

_ “Well, it is best to get started sooner than later.”  _

Nicky kisses his apologies into Joe's skin, curls over his chest, and gasps out prayers in languages long dead. He bends double over his lover and spills his sin across his chest; presses his face into the curve between neck and shoulder and though no tears fall from his cheeks his shoulders tremble with all the power of broken sobs. 

His Joe holds him, gentle fingers soothing over the muscles of his back, kissing the sweaty skin of his temple.

“Were you loved as a child Yusuf?” Nicky croaks, words muffled into skin but heard all the same. 

He feels Joe still. 

They rarely spoke of their mortal lives. Not with others, not with each other. The line between who they had been born as and who they had been  _ reborn _ as was seventy years of murder and war wide. And for the sake of grief, the sake of mourning, it was best not to dwell on all that was lost. 

“I was.” he says finally, voice as cautious as a dance “My home was a place of laughter and life. My mother sang and my father told us stories and my sister and brothers fought like any others but there was so much love.” His voice was thick with emotion. He does not mention his wife, his children who Nicky had never learned the names of. “My family loved fiercely, fought furiously, and laughed easily.”

“A whole clan of Yusufs” Nicky muses. He sounds more playful than he feels, but it is a welcome shield. 

Joe laughs softly, pets the back of Nicky's head “And you?” 

Nicky sits up, settles back on his hips, and feels the way Joe’s body responds under his own. It is secondary to the conversation. He looks down at his lover, sees him gazing at him with gentle eyes and a sleep ready body. 

“I was loved by my parents the way they should love a child,” he says haltingly “That is to say, I believe they loved me because I was their offspring and that was what was required of them. It wasn’t an unhappy home but-” he pauses, works his jaw, picks a spot of blood from beneath his nails and thinks again of wandering hands and black church robes.

“But it was an empty one. It was a place to be and grow up but it was not a place I find myself recalling with so many fond memories.” 

Joe watches him, searches for the puzzle pieces laid out in Nickys eyes and words and actions. Tries to piece it together and Nicky offers him a thin smile, a smile just for him.

“Many things can happen to a child that is not watched.” He concludes “And there have always been men who look for those forgotten children.” 

The bedframe where Joe grips it cracks. He exhales, long and slow and Nicky watches him. 

“Those men are long dead.” Nicky continues softly “But their faces live on in men like Father Marcus.”

Joe sits up, cups Nickys face, and presses their foreheads together.

“That child will never be the same,” Nicky says, thinking of the boy with the soldier's eyes. 

Joe caresses his thumbs over Nicky’s cheekbones “No.” He whispers “He will not. But that does not mean that he cannot be happy.”

They are not speaking of the Boy.

“No.” Nicky agrees “No it does not.” 

~

_ If love and grace isn't for all _

_ I'd rather be a sinner and take the fall _

~

**Author's Note:**

> The quotes are various psalms and prayers but the last one is the song Love & Grace by Imminence. Its a lovely song


End file.
